The Gift of the Magi
by Mrs Dionysius O'Gall
Summary: A Christmas parody, with apologies to O. Henry.


May 20, 2006. A date. That was all it was. Just a date. And yet, a very important date. A date dreamed of, and long-awaited, and still forthcoming. The cliché went, that as sands through the hourglass, so go the days of our lives...and certainly, the days would come and go, come and go, until that magical May-day. Days passing by, one and two at a time, filled with resentment and pain and pride, like the love that they felt that had dissipated into the air like smoky wisps. Three times, Lorelai looked at the date on the calendar. May 20, 2006. Lorelai counted them. 147 days until the date that would have been her wedding day. Then she looked at the calendar again. Tomorrow would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on her wonderful new couch in her beautifully painted new living room, and wallow. So, Lorelai did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of wallowing, and smiles, and men with fruitful previous liaisons. Which gets her to wonder why her life has come to this: wallowing in perpetuity.

While the mistress of the erstwhile Crap Shack is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. What was once a shabby ramshackle kludge of a house had been transformed into a small-town showcase. Lorelai looked like she definitely was moving up in the world.

But look beyond the house now, at the road. There stands a mailbox into which no letter will go, for Lorelai is a denizen of the digital age. Step with me into the Town, and across the Square, to the establishment marked "Williams Hardware." Walk in the front door. There, past the bells over the door from which Lorelai's step could coax the sweetest ring, is the counter. And standing behind that counter is the man bearing the name "Mr. Lucas William Danes."

Look around, and see the disarray that Luke's Diner has become. Luke's Diner had been the pride of Stars Hollow during a former period of prosperity when its proprietor was unburdened by his secret. Now, when his secret weighs heavy upon him like a Revolutionary War cannon ball, his clientele is shrunk to one: Kirk. Yes, the secret weighed heavily upon the heart of one Mr. Lucas William Danes. He remembered the days when he came home to the erstwhile Crap Shack, and was called "Luke" by the sexiest woman in the world, and greatly hugged and then thoroughly loved by that same woman, Ms. Lorelai Victoria Danes, already introduced to you. Which is all very good.

Lorelai finished her wallow and attended to her cheeks with Sephora. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and there were 147 days until what had been the planned wedding day. She had counted every day since the date was set. She had imagined that day for months since the proposal, with this result. Love alone doesn't go far. Real-life stressors had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only 147 days until she would have wed Luke. She looked to the Christmas tree in the living room. Cupid had finally been kind to her and she was able to plan the wedding and many wonderful days for Luke. It was her joy to do the planning for her wedding to Luke. Her Luke. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for the wedding. She had found the perfect dress and tried it on every night, a dress fine and rare and special--something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being married to Luke.

Go with me now, upstairs, to the bathroom. There is a mirror above the double sinks. Perhaps you have seen double-sinks. You can brush your teeth at one sink and spit into the other. Suddenly she whirled into the bathroom and stood before the mirror. Where there had been two toothbrushes, there now was only one. She remembers how she stood there and confronted him with his sin of omission. She remembers pulling the ring off her finger and flinging it at him. She remembers how she found out, standing in front of the diner. One minute, her eyes were shining brilliantly, then her face lost its color within twenty seconds. She recalls how her nights are no longer filled with the joy of his hands threading through her hair, and elsewhere. Loving actions cancelled by a sin of omission. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.

Now, there was an aspect of Luke and Lorelai in which they both took a mighty pride. Their independence. Lorelai could have lived like the Queen of Sheba in the Gilmore Mansion, but Lorelai's pride in what she thought was the right way to raise her daughter outshone Emily and Richard's jewels and gifts. Had Taylor Doose been the trash collector, with all his treasures piled up in a garbage truck, Luke would have stood in front of the Williams Hardware sign every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his own beard in envy.

So standing in front of the diner and finding out about April, Lorelai's pride collapsed about her like a rippling and shining cloak, a cascade of scalding coffee. Through the window, she looked at April and imagined what it would mean if she had given Luke a child. The thought made her quite wistful and she quickly considered going back to wallowing. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed onto the sidewalk.

Back in the present, with determination, she strode to her newly-enlarged closet. On went her coat; on went the striped scarf she'd worn when he made her the skating rink. With a flip of her hair, and with the brilliant sparkle slowly returning in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.

Where she stopped, the sign read: "Williams Hardware." One flight up Lorelai ran, and collected herself, panting.

Oh, and the next minutes tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking her heart for Luke's present.

She found it at last. It surely had been made for Luke and no one else. There was no other like it in all the world, and he had sampled enough of the feminine to know. It was incomparably priceless: her forgiveness for what he had neglected to tell her by omission; a simple gift, to be sure, properly proclaiming its value by virtue alone and not measured in dollars spent--as all good things should do. As soon as she realized that his sin had been out of love for her, she knew that she must again be Luke's. For he had sought only to love her more by sparing her pain. It was even worthy of postponing the marriage. As soon as she saw thought of it, she knew that she must forgive Luke. For his actions were so like him. Quietness and value--the description applied to him. And as for Luke, once secure in the knowledge that she accepted everything about him, including April, Luke need no longer be properly anxious about her time in Christopher's company. Grand as her family history was, with Gilmore money and privilege, he sometimes looked at her on the sly on account of the nagging thought that she wanted more.

When she realized what her gift would be, her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her pen and some paper and went to work listing how she would repair the ravages her pride had wrought. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task.

Within forty minutes, the paper was covered with large looping script.

Meanwhile, Luke had returned to the diner after visiting that object of contention, April, for Christmas Eve. Entering the diner, he set about his business. The coffee was made and since there were no longer any customers, the stove, idle.

Then came the time when Luke usually closed the diner.

Luke was never late. Lorelai mulled over her words in her head, held the crumpled list in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. Though not religious, she did occasionally acknowledge Mary of Nazareth as her home girl, and so she had a habit of saying little silent prayers about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please God, make him realize I still love him, no matter what."

The door opened and Luke stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was, after all these years, suddenly presented with a daughter! He wore his father's old jacket and fingerless gloves.

Luke stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Lorelai, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.

Lorelai wriggled off the table and went to him.

"Luke," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had to come here. I realize I overreacted to your not telling me about April. I'm sorry I cancelled the wedding. And I'm here because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. Except, see it's not a real present. It's to tell you that I was wrong too. I should have noticed you were tired and confused and distressed. Say 'Merry Christmas!' Luke, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice--what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."

"You've forgiven me?" asked Luke, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.

"Yes," said Lorelai.

Luke looked about the room curiously.

"You say you've forgiven me?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.

"You needn't ask for it," said Lorelai. "It's yours, I tell you. It's Christmas Eve, Hon. Maybe what you did by keeping the news of April from me was wrong," she went on with sudden serious sweetness, "but nothing could ever keep me from loving you. Did you bring any food up here, Luke?"

Out of his trance, Luke seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Lorelai. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Telling her right away, or mulling it over for a few weeks--what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.

Luke drew a box from his jacket pocket and threw it upon the table.

"Don't make any mistake, Lorelai," he said, "about me. I'm not perfect. But if you'll open that box you may see why I could never be with anyone else."

White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the diner.

For there lay The Ring--the beautiful ring, that Kirk had coveted long ago in the diner, the ring that Lorelai had spitefully returned to Luke when she found out about April through a diner window. A beautiful ring, purest diamond--just the right ring for her to wear. It was an expensive ring, she knew, for their love had been dearly bought by undergoing trail after trial. Her heart had simply craved and yearned for years for the whole package without the least hope of possession. And now, when it could have been hers, came April, and the wedding date that should have been hers was cancelled.

But now, she hugged the ring to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "The whole package, Luke!"

And then Lorelai leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"

Luke had not yet received his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly within her eyes, which seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.

"Luke, will you marry me on May 20, 2006? I've waited my whole life for the whole package. I try on my dress a zillion times a day now."

Luke replied, "Let me put it back on your finger. I want to see how it looks on it."

Luke tumbled down on the couch and took her hands in his and smiled. He watched her as he slipped the ring back on her finger.

"Lorelai," said he, "let's sit here a while and plan our wedding." And happily she sat on his lap, and an observer would have seen two beautiful people with even more beautiful souls, not succeeding very well at planning their wedding, but excelling at loving each other.

The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And for that Lorelai was always grateful. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in an apartment above a diner who most wisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their heart: their independence. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi. 


End file.
